


The Dying Light

by phyripo



Series: We Were Here [1]
Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Legends, Lighthouses, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-01
Updated: 2017-10-01
Packaged: 2019-01-08 08:21:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12250590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phyripo/pseuds/phyripo
Summary: There are strange stories abound about the old lighthouse. It all goes back to two men and a dying flame.





	The Dying Light

**Author's Note:**

> Confusingly (but I hope not too much so) the parts in the present are written in the past tense, while the parts in the past are written in present tense. Just pretend it makes sense :')
> 
> I didn't really say this when I posted it [on Tumblr](http://phyripo.tumblr.com/post/158983779441/can-i-just-say-i-adore-how-you-write-rom-and-bul), but it was at least partially inspired by the song [White Pearl, Black Oceans by Sonata Arctica](https://youtu.be/EQtuPvtye5Y)! But since I found myself writing a story with a similar theme also inspired by a song I thought I'd just... Make it into a series? "Ghost Stories That Are Not Quite Ghost Stories ft My Favorite Pairings" :D
> 
> FEATURING  
> Stefan - Bulgaria  
> Dragos - Romania

No one really came near the lighthouse these days. All kinds of weird stories buzzed around the village, and every resident had something to add to them.

There were screams from the tower, they would say. All days of the year, or only on full moons or new moons or only when the tide was high or the wind was strong – that was never clear. But there were screams, they agreed about that much.

Some people claimed to have seen pale, ghostly figures in the tower. Some said they would leap to their death when the tide was low and the rocks on the shore were exposed. Others said they were trapped in the light. Yet others claimed to have seen the light burn as if the lighthouse were still in use, like it had been for those many years. Until the storm.

They agreed about that much, too.

 

 

He’s always been a loner, he thinks. He doesn’t really remember having friends as a child, and life near the coast is unforgiving enough that he used to spend days just trying to get by.

Now, finally, he can say he has settled.

Stefan Borisov, lighthouse keeper. He can live with that. It’s a lonely existence as well, sure, but the townspeople rely on him. The people out at sea, sailing close to the treacherous rocks, count on him. It’s a good feeling. It’s also kind of terrifying.

Not everyone in the village knows his name; most people just call him the lighthouse man. He usually introduces himself as just the lighthouse keeper. There is one man, selling clothes and blankets on the small market, who used to call him the  _guardian of the light_  until Stefan told him to stop being dramatic and just learn his name.

He’s been Stefan ever since, and there is a pleased sparkle in the man’s rust-brown eyes every time he says it that makes Stefan wonder just who won that little battle.

The odd thing is that he doesn’t even know the vendor’s name.

 

 

There was a play about the lighthouse nearly every year; the village school had started writing out contests as to who could make the most interesting version of the legend. There were robots, once. With lasers. The children agreed that that was the absolute best one.

Most of the adults were quite happy with the one about the forbidden love, the lighthouse keeper who fell in love with a woman pregnant with another man’s child. They also agreed that they should limit the amount of films their children were allowed to watch.

 

 

The odd thing is…

The vendor is walking up to his lighthouse, choppy hair flying everywhere in the wind even as he holds his hat down tightly. Stefan amuses himself for a while by watching the man navigate the narrow path. He’s carrying something wrapped in a blanket that flaps in the wind.

“What are you doing here?” he asks when he opens the door to the knocking that ensues when the vendor reaches the lighthouse.

“Oh, no need for pleasantries, I see.”

Stefan sighs. The vendor grins a toothy grin, touching his tongue to his front teeth.

“I just thought I’d stop by. Doesn’t it get lonely out here?” He is trying to peer into the lighthouse over Stefan’s shoulder. “Do you actually live in here?”

“Of course I don’t live in here. It’s a lighthouse.”

“Well, what do I know?” he pushes his hair out of his weirdly colored eyes, tucking some strands underneath his hat. “Really, Stefan.  _Do_  you get lonely?”

Stefan is silent, and the vendor takes that for an answer, apparently, because he reaches out, touching his shoulder. He smiles a little softer this time, though there’s still a curious edge to it. Not a malignant one, just a sharp one. As if he knows everything.

Stefan invites him in.

 

 

There had been historians who had tried to unravel the mystery. Tried to separate fact from fiction, legend from reality. They all left, for some reason or another, before they got anywhere.

That is when the villagers really started believing that something was  _wrong_  with the lighthouse.

It was a monument now, so it couldn’t be taken down. It had remained standing through wars and heavier storms than ever before. It never seemed to change.

There was plenty of space to build on the shore, but people built in the other direction, even if the grounds were soggy there and their houses sunk. Anything was better than being near the lighthouse.

 

 

And, as the vendor leaves his house, now-empty blanket wrapped around his shoulders like a cloak, Stefan looks down at the odd little stone carving he’s been gifted, and realizes he still doesn’t know the man’s name.

That is going to have to change.

The next time he visits the market, he spends some time talking to the vendor, about the village and the lighthouse and about the man’s younger brother, who lives with him, apparently. Stefan doesn’t have a lot of things to do during the day most of the time, not when it is sunny like today, so he stays a while, talking to some other people too.

He doesn’t learn the vendor’s name.

The next day is sunny, and so is the next, and the market is ever-busy and the vendor ever-smiling. He is friendly, he likes to talk about his job and his brother, seemingly knows all the stories circulating around town, especially those about Stefan, and appears to be interested in getting to know him. Stefan does his best to let him do that, even if it is only to learn his name.

After a while, he kind of forgets that that was what he came here for.

 

 

A while ago, someone from out of town came and moved into the lighthouse keeper’s house. A mother and daughter from the city. Their names were whispered around town with something akin to fear tinting people’s voices. Even those who swore high and low they didn’t believe in ghosts, in the legend of the lighthouse, whatever it was, were afraid for the little family.

The young girl was friendly to the villagers, the mother seemed withdrawn.

Some children went exploring with the girl, overseen by the mother. They climbed the stairs in the lighthouse despite the warnings they had been hearing their entire lives.

They came back down. The girl had found a carved rock with some crudely scratched letters on the back. This gave birth to a whole slew of new speculations.

She thought it was fantastic that she had achieved the status of local celebrity.

 

 

Can you really be friends with someone if you don’t even know their name?

Stefan lets the sea wind whip his scarf to and fro harshly and wonders. He wonders about the man he calls the vendor as if it’s a title, who is so open about everything but that. Is it a game to him? Is he waiting for Stefan to guess somehow?

There is a ship, out in the dark distance. He watches its faint light for a while.

Maybe there’s more to it. Maybe he’s a criminal, an outlaw. But then, why make it so obvious you’re hiding something?

Maybe he’s just weird.

Stefan thinks he could live with that.

 

 

The girl who had climbed the tower became a teenager fascinated with the village history. She couldn’t leave, not like the historians who had passed through, so she dedicated her time to searching through her own house and the lighthouse, when she was sure there were no native townspeople around to scold her for it. She didn’t believe in ghosts.

There were little stone carvings in nooks and crannies, hidden in places no one had thought to look for centuries. Or maybe, she thought, the carvings had hidden themselves. She did very much want to believe in magic.

All five carvings she had found so far had letters scratched in the back, like a message. She tried to decipher it.

 

 

Definitely weird, Stefan has concluded, as he stares at the assorted stone carvings the vendor keeps bestowing on him. A few are just carved in the shape of seashells, like one might find on the coast below the tower. Others are more intricate, like one depicting the lighthouse.

“Why don’t you sell these?” Stefan asks the vendor one day. The man laughs, tongue touching his teeth.

“I can’t make a living with that,” he replies, as if it’s obvious. “Besides, these are special.”

“How so?”

He plucks the one Stefan is holding from his grip with thin fingers and holds it up close to his face, seemingly studying it. He turns and turns the stone, letting different corners of it catch the fading light. Stefan should pay attention – dusk falls quick, it’s almost time to light the fire in the lighthouse.

The vendor snaps his fingers. Stefan looks at him.

“They are special because they are yours,” he says, voice oddly soft. Like he is sharing a secret. Stefan likes the idea of sharing secrets with the vendor.

“I thought they were yours,” he replies.

A short laugh. “Always have been yours, Stefan.” He turns the stone he’s holding over, and there is an S on the back that Stefan is sure wasn’t there before. He reaches out to run his fingers across it without thinking, starts when the vendor clasps the stone between their hands, their fingers touching.

“You’d know if anything were mine,” he whispers. Stefan shivers.

 

 

It was odd that she could make out the letters so clearly, she thought. Shouldn’t they have been weathered beyond recognition?

Then again, shouldn’t the whole lighthouse have been weathered beyond recognition? Before it became a monument, no one appeared to have ever given it any thought. It should have crumbled decades, perhaps even centuries ago.

She decided to start  _literally_ digging, often in the middle of the night so no one noticed. Her mother was absent as ever. She wasn’t sure what she expected to find. Perhaps nothing at all.

 

 

S. T. E. F. A. N.

The letters weren’t there before. He knows this with absolute certainty.

Stefan goes into the village on a rainy day and talks to some people in the local tavern. No one appears to know the vendor. No one knows where he lives or what his name is. Some people can’t even recall having met him on the market. He doesn’t stand out to them like he does to Stefan.

But at least he is real. He doesn’t exist in Stefan’s imagination only, as he had started to fear.

He somehow isn’t surprised when he finds the man at the top of the lighthouse one evening as he goes to light the fire. His teeth flicker in the light when he grins. Stefan sits down next to him, putting his hat on his thighs.

“You’re curious,” the vendor says.

“I am.”

“I am curious too, Stefan.” And, when Stefan looks at him in confusion, “You have never  _asked_  for my name, as if you assume I’d be unwilling to give it out.” He picks up Stefan’s hat and lets it twirl around between his fingers, faster and faster.

Stefan puts his hand on his hat, stopping its movement. “Aren’t you?”

The vendor looks at the hat, amused, then up at Stefan. His eyes flicker too, and it’s impossible to tell whether it’s the fire or something behind them. There are sharp shadows on his face, harshly framing his too-sharp cheekbones and his narrow nose. He just looks. Stefan looks back.

“I’ll tell you something,” the man eventually says.

“Yes?”

“I prefer to reserve my name for special occasions.” He leans closer, planting his hand on Stefan’s thigh. The wind howls around the lighthouse as it always does. It’s comforting, by now.

“Such as?” Stefan puts his own cold hand overtop the vendor’s. Oh, but this is so wrong. He can’t possibly be thinking about…

The vendor leans closer, and his eyes are shuttered. His breath whispers hot on Stefan’s jaw when he speaks.

“Call me Dragos.”

And he kisses Stefan.

 

 

It was a… She honestly wasn’t sure what it was. It was a  _something_. A  _one of those_. A  _thing_  all around the lighthouse, and the lighthouse keeper’s house. Something she couldn’t dig through whatever she tried.

The local librarian was starting to get rather suspicious about her borrowing so many books about magic.

 

 

As wrong as it is, Stefan can’t find it in himself to care.

 _Dragos_. He wants to say it as often as possible.

He does so, because it seems to amuse Dragos himself as well.

Sometimes, Dragos whispers his own name into Stefan’s skin, which seems odd until he remembers –  _you’d know if anything were mine_. It’s still odd, but it feels good. It’s good to be wanted even when the person who wants you is a fabric vendor who can’t seem to stop moving, or talking about his brother or showing up at the oddest times – and Stefan often has no clue how he even got in.

He takes that in stride, along with the way the cloak he bought from Dragos seems to repair itself or how the fire in the lighthouse never seems to waver when he’s around.

At least until the storm.

 

 

The last stone carving, she found by accident. It was the first letter, she was quite certain of that. The S/D to complete her words.

Protection, she thought they were, so she was careful to always keep at least one within the  _something_  around her home and the lighthouse. Her sparse friends thought she was completely insane, and she couldn’t really blame them. As much as she wanted to come out with a story about this, about the  _something_  and the stones and the undeniable magic around the area, she knew no one would take her seriously.

Those kids who wrote that play about forbidden love had been right in a way, she thought, because the names the carvings formed were both male.

No, no one would take her seriously. She kept looking for more information nonetheless.

 

 

It is  _his_ fault.  _His_  responsibility. He failed his duty. No amount of Dragos telling him to calm down is going to change that.

“I am the lighthouse keeper!” he shouts, over the wind at the top of the lighthouse. “Didn’t you call me the  _guardian of the light_? If there was no light that night, then isn’t it my fault they hit the rocks?”

“You couldn’t have known,” Dragos says, trying to touch him. “You couldn’t have known the light was low, Stefan. It never has been.”

 _It never has been_. “Because of  _you_.” But you were equally distracted, he thinks. We were distracted by each other.

“It isn’t my fault either. It was an accident.” He finally succeeds in grasping Stefan’s shoulder, but Stefan resists the tingle that flares out from his hand.

“You shouldn’t be here,” he just says. Dragos shakes his head, expression a mix between angry and confused. “I’m serious, Dragos. The villagers want me prosecuted.” He can already see them coming up the cliff from the village.

“I know.” And his eyes definitely flash this time, a bright red hue that should startle Stefan but doesn’t, because he trusts Dragos, perhaps against his better judgment. “I’m not going to let them.”

The stone carvings are there. Were they there before? Stefan blinks at the one depicting the lighthouse, because there is another letter on the back of it. The rest are no different, when he picks them up and turns them over.

D. R. A. G. O. S.

He looks up at the man in question, whose hair whips in the wind and whose eyes are brighter than ever.

“They can’t touch what’s mine,” he says. The carvings vanish, just like that.

When Stefan stands up, slightly dazed, Dragos pulls him in and kisses him, right where the angry mob nearing the lighthouse can see. Stefan kisses him back, because what has he got to lose?

“They bear you ill will,” Dragos mumbles, as the villagers come to a messy standstill at the foot of the tower, just out of its actual reach. “No one of ill will shall ever stay here.”

The villagers are turning already, as if they have forgotten what they came for.

“But they’ll be back,” Dragos continues, holding on tight to Stefan when he tries to look down in astonishment. “They’ll remember, and they’ll return. There is nothing I can do about that.”

But… “That means I have to stay in the lighthouse forever,” Stefan breathes. “Or they will grab me.  _And_  you.”

“Yes.” The word is nearly whispered against his skin. “Can I ask you something, Stefan?”

He holds tight to Dragos’s cloak, because he has a bad feeling about what is about to come. If he can never leave the lighthouse, then…

“Yes.”

 

 

She finally found one tiny reference to the last lighthouse keeper. His name matched one of the names on the stones.

He was to be prosecuted, most likely sentenced to death, for letting the light go out one night and causing a ship to sink on the rocky shore, killing all onboard, and to add insult to injury, he had been suspected of being romantically involved with a man, which was unheard of at the time.

But he vanished before the trial could even start. That was all there was on the history. It’d been buried deep. Maybe it hadn’t wanted to be found before.

She didn’t believe in ghosts, but she did believe in magic, so she put all the stone carvings back, returned her books to the library and focused on writing down what she knew now. Perhaps, Stefan the lighthouse keeper and his officially-unnamed lover were around somehow, if not as ghosts then in the unbreakable buildings themselves, in the unchanging rocks on the shore. She didn’t want to disturb that. She had no right to.

That didn’t mean she couldn’t make a good story out of the facts. It could be the next play, perhaps.

 

 

“Do you trust me?” Dragos asks. Stefan looks down at him. He is warm, pressed against him from thighs to chest. He is  _safe_. Stefan knows this. He won’t let anything happen to him.

“I love you,” he says.

“I love you too,” Dragos returns, with a grin. He kisses Stefan slowly while the wind howls around them. It will be another stormy night.

The fire in the tower lights with a  _swoosh_. Stefan bites his lip and holds Dragos’s flickering gaze. He nods.

Dragos pushes them both over the edge of the lighthouse.

They never hit the ground.

**Author's Note:**

> _My little tower, seal my fate_   
>  _Help me pay back, end their hate_   
>  _Black oceans beneath come and swallow me_   
>  _One direction, down, down, down_   
>  _Pitch black night for my old town_   
>  _Black oceans beneath shall now swallow me_


End file.
